


Stuck Together

by GaiBaleno35



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Events of Pacific Rim 2 are ignored because I haven't gotten around to watching the movie, F/M, Fighting Like An Old Married Couple, Found Family, M/M, Mako is a queen and everyone knows it, Newt and Hermann choose to share a lab, Raleigh is oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GaiBaleno35/pseuds/GaiBaleno35
Summary: After Raleigh discovers a perfectly functional second lab in the Shatterdome, he begins to wonder why Dr. Gottlieb and Newt share a lab when they obviously hate each other.





	Stuck Together

It wasn’t even until Raleigh accidentally wandered into a spare lab that he even thought to notice how unusual a biologist and a mathematician sharing a lab was.  Before this he had been too hyped on adrenaline of the oncoming apocalypse that he didn’t even stop to think about the fact that the shatterdome probably had more than one lab. Looking around, it was the same as the lab the two scientists were currently sharing.

He shrugged, thinking it probably had to do with convenience. After all, when the Kaiju attacks got more frequent time was probably of the essence, so putting two conflicting scientists in the same room was probably so they could get all the information as soon as possible. Stacker was all about efficiency, and something like that could save time and money, which the Jaeger program had been rapidly running out of. In the end Raleigh left the lab and didn’t give it another thought.

  
                                                                                                               ***

         Raleigh is confronted again by the strangeness of the lab situations two weeks later when Mako hands him a file and asks him to take it to Dr. Gottlieb.

 

“Sure,” he says, despite knowing full well it wasn’t a question, “where’s he at?”

 

Mako raises an eyebrow, “he’s in the lab with Newt, where else would he be?”

 

Raleigh looks at her and realizes that he really did ask a stupid question. Where else would he think Dr. Gottlieb would be? Ever since the Jaeger program had been officially shut down more than half the staff had left the shatterdome, moving on to or going back to a pleasantly Kaiju-free life. Only a handful of people like himself and Mako had stayed on to get everything put into place before the program officially shut down in a months’ time.

Honestly, he had expected Dr. Gottlieb to be on the first plane out of Hong Kong and go to Oxford or Cambridge or some Ivy place where he wouldn’t have to worry about Kaiju innards being on his side of the room. He asks Dr. Gottlieb while giving him the file why he was staying on the extra few months, since his work was pretty much finished, but the man had just sneers at him.

 

“Contrary to what you believe, my work is not as simple as putting down the chalk and calling it quits. There are hundreds of more things to be categorized- “

Dr. Gottlieb turns around, finally noticing Newt sitting behind him silently mouthing along sarcastically to his lecture.

 

“Newton, how many times have I told you not to mock me like that-’’

 

“Whatever man, I’m the only one in this lab who’s actually doing real science- “

 

“Mathematics is a respected science- “

 

“Mathematics is a respected science that's not real- “

 

Raleigh turns around and left the lab. The two scientists don’t even notice he’s gone.

  


                                                                                                                   ***

“They know they don’t have to share a lab, right?”

         

Mako turns from the other side of the room where she was getting dressed.

 

“Who?”

 

“Newt and Dr. Gottlieb. They act like they’re trapped together or something. There’s a perfectly good lab right down the hall from them. One of them could have just moved there this whole time. Hell, they still have a month, they could still do it!”

 

Mako laughs. “Oh, they are stuck with each other. But I don’t think they are stuck the way you think they are.”

 

With that Mako leaves the room before Raleigh could even think to ask what the hell she meant by that.

  
                                                                                                                    ***  
  


Raleigh is talking to Newt when he starts to get what Mako meant.

It was nearing the end of the month, and any work needed to be done was completed. Everything that needed cataloging was cataloged, leaving Raleigh more or less a weeks’ worth of almost nothing to do. Newt, having carefully preserved and packaged all his Kaiju specimens to be shipped to wherever he was going, was much in the same boat.

 

“So, what are you gonna do when it’s all done?” Newt asks, waving his arms to gesture to the entirety of the shatterdome.

 

Raleigh shrugs. “Mako’s got a job in Tokyo waiting for her, and I figure I’ll get it sorted out when I get there. Besides being a pilot, manual labor’s all I’ve really done, so I’ll probably do that or something. What about you, where are you taking all your Kaiju bits to?”

 

Newt laughs. “Stanford baby. Gonna set up a lab and be a freakin rockstar there!”

 

They both laugh.

 

“What about Hermann?” Raleigh asks. “What’s he doing?”

 

Newt looks at him strangely. “He’s coming with me man.Where else would he be going?”

  
  
                                                                                                                      ***  
  


“They’re going to work at Stanford together?”

 

Mako doesn’t look up from her desk, which tells Raleigh that this isn’t news to her.

 

“Yes. Is it so surprising that two world renowned scientists are going to go and work at Stanford?”

 

“Two scientists who can’t be in a room with each other without fighting like middle schoolers.”

 

“You know,” Mako says, signing whatever document is in front of her, “that second lab was Dr. Gottlieb’s.”

 

Raleigh stares at her, but she still didn’t look up from her papers.

 

“At first, they had to share a lab because of how small of funding was available, but once it took off, of course we had enough money to have two separate labs for the scientists. It only made sense.”

  


She looks up at him and smiles. “He was in there for a little over a week, and then both Newt and Hermann moved all of his stuff back into the first lab.”

 

“But…why?” He couldn’t imagine Hermann giving up any semblance of peace and order once he got it. He could have understood if Newt had been the one to go back to the other scientist, but Dr. Gottlieb?

 

“He said it was ‘too quiet to properly work out my equations’, but really? I think he just missed Newt.”

  
                                                                                                                 ***

Since he, Mako, Newt and Dr. Gottlieb were pretty much the only people still actually _living_ in the shatterdome, the mess hall was closed and they were left to fend for themselves in terms of meals. This somehow turned into a regular evening dinner for the four of them in the empty mess hall.

“Dr. Gottlieb, I had no idea you knew how to cook,” Mako says. “I always assumed you were the type of man who had others cook for him.”

Dr. Gottlieb harrumphs, but continues to stir in various spices that Raleigh had never heard of into the pot in front of him.

“You must be thinking of Dr. Geiszler, who didn’t know how to even boil water on a stove top when we first met. What kind of useless biologist doesn’t even know how  to boil water?”

“That’s not even true! He’s trying to defame me because I’m the only real scientist in the room!’ Newton shouts, whilst dragging a chair from one of the tables into the kitchen.

“Hermann, sit down! Your leg is bothering you! Your eyes doing that twitchy thing!”

Raleigh expected Dr. Gottlieb to snap that he was alright, but instead he just rolls his eyes and hands the spoon to Mako.

“Really, Newton,” he admonishes as he sits down.

“I _told_ you that you’ve been standing _all_ day and that you should rest but noooo, ‘I’ve got to cook dinner tonight Newton. Everyone else will starve because you’re all useless and would die without me Newton’”

“I never said that,” Dr. Gottlieb said, rubbing his leg.

“Do you need me to go get your heating pad?” Newt asks. His voice had gone softer and his hand starts rubbing Dr. Gottlieb’s shoulder, letting him know that the conversation was now only meant for the two scientists.

He turns back to Mako, who was staring at the stove dials in confusion as the soup boils over the lip of the pot.           

  
                                                                                                                  ***  
  


Raleigh isn’t too surprised as he nears the lab and hears shouting coming from inside the lab. Knowing that the last bit of paperwork that both scientists needed to fill out wasn’t really that important, he decides that he would just wait outside until they were done.

 

“How could you do this Hermann?!?” Newt shouts. Raleigh heard clinking metals, telling him that Newt was probably going through the scrap bin. He’s walked in many times to see Newt digging through the bin while Hermann watches smugly, no doubt having thrown out something Newt had deemed important and Hermann deemed a nuisance in his lab.

 

“I’m not letting you bring those vile contraptions with us to California Newton!”

 

“But they worked I proved they worked! We used them to save the world, so you know they worked!”

 

Raleigh pieces together that they are talking about the neural bridge Newt had built. Newt had proudly shown him both and explained how he built them (with Raleigh smiling along politely) while Hermann had glared in the background.

 

“It’s because they work that I’m throwing them out!”

 

Raleigh snaps his head up to the door. He figures he should probably come back later, since this seemed to be getting personal, but his feet are stuck to the ground. From the other side of the door Hermann begins to speak, much softer this time.

 

“Do you know what it was like to find you seizing on the ground in here? I thought you’d finally killed yourself Newton. I’m not going to let you do that to yourself again, I can’t.”

 

There was silence from the lab again. Raleigh didn’t realize until they had stopped yelling how loud they were being just moments before.

 

“Okay,” Newt says, “It stays in the trash.”

 

Hermann snorts. “Liar,” he said, making them both laugh.

 

Raleigh decides this was the perfect moment to pretend he just got here.

 

Turns out, it wasn’t. If anything, he walked into an even more intimate moment than the one he’d overheard outside.

Newt’s sitting on Hermann’s now empty desk, his forehead pressed against Hermann’s. Hermann has all but completely dropped his weight onto his cane and Newt’s chest, and his free hand is slowly thumbing across the other man’s cheek while Newt clutches the back of his shirt.

Raleigh thinks he would have preferred to walk in on them kissing. He awkwardly clears his throat and the two look over to him.

 

“Sup, man! That the final clearance paperwork?” Newt asks, as if he hadn’t walked in on him having a moment with a guy he regularly throws Kaiju intestines at.

 

“Uh, yeah.” He replies.

 

“Sweet,” Newt carefully slides out of his entanglement with Hermann and bounces over to snatch the papers out of Raleigh’s hands.

 

Raleigh looks over at Hermann, who looks more irked at being interrupted than embarrassed at being seen in such a compromising position as Raleigh thought he’d be.

 

Newt grabs a pen from the inside of Hermann’s jacket and quickly signs all of the papers.

 

“Well that’s it man! Come look us up if you’re ever in California!”

 

“Yeah, or course.” Raleigh says, fist bumping Newt.

 

“Hermann, say goodbye to the nice man.” Newt calls over his shoulder.

 

“It’s been an absolute pleasure,” Herman says, saluting.

 

Newt pushes his hand down. “What are you doing man? You aren’t in the army, come on cut that out we were having a moment!”

 

“I was just trying to convey to him my gratitude for his service-“

 

“You can do that by not saluting him, what are you a-“

 

“ _What_ have I told you about calling ‘man’, its uncouth behavior-“

 

Raleigh smiles and quietly backs out of the lab.

                                                                                                                  ***

Four months later when he and Mako visit Stanford, he’s not at all surprised to see a lab with a sign that reads “Dr. Geiszler & Dr. Gottlieb” on the door.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing Pacific Rim fanfiction, so please let me know what you think! Constructive criticism is very very welcome! Please tell me how you think I did and what I can do to improve my work! Thanks!!


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